


Inhale; Exhale

by missbeizy



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M, RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 09:20:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2767922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missbeizy/pseuds/missbeizy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Orli meets Ian.  Orli likes Ian.  Ian likes Orli.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inhale; Exhale

January 13th was Orlando Bloom’s birthday. In the spirit of the continuing filming of Lord of the Rings, a massive, private party was held right in the middle of the Helm’s Deep set. Built in the center of a place called Dry Quarry Creek, the spot was ideal for a celebrity birthday party that hosted absolutely no press or outside media.

January 8th was the day that Gandalf the Gray, more commonly known as Sir Ian McKellen, arrived in New Zealand to begin filming his part of the movie. And so Orlando’s birthday party was the first opportunity for the entire cast and crew to meet and chat with Ian.

Ian carried with him an air of solidly aged grace and sureness that seemed to come before him when he entered a room. And it did just that the night of the party, bringing half the attention of the place to the door. The other half pretended they hadn’t seen him come in for the sake of not embarrassing the British sir.

But Orlando had no such hesitance. He had been waiting months to meet this man that he grew up idolizing. Orlando himself was a very inexperienced actor; all full of untested talent, nervous energy, and a mixture of self-doubt and arrogance that suited the title of inexperienced very well. Lord of the Rings was his first “big” movie role—everything before had been a tiny cameo or a walk-on. Of course, that didn’t mean he wasn’t good. Oh, he was damned good, in fact. But everyone has to start somewhere.

And so while they were coworkers and technical equals on the set, reality told a different story. Orlando was as nervous as a fan as he attempted to look casual in his progress towards the front of the room where small knots of people gathered around Ian.

As he shuffled around the outskirts of the group, he managed to catch Ian’s eye. Politely excusing himself from the person rattling on in front of him, he waved Orlando over. The young Brit felt all his nerves jumble up and then cinch tight. And then once Ian had smiled and hugged him and then put him at arms’ length, it all relaxed. The fantasy image was layered over by the real one; he was nothing more than a dapper gentleman and a very nice chap, to boot.

“Legolas, is it?” Ian quipped playfully, guiding Orlando away from the crowd.

“Absolutely,” Orlando breathlessly replied.

Ian was wearing a pair of beige linen pants and a maroon colored dress shirt, hair neatly combed; looking every inch the essence of his stereotype.

“Happy birthday, I believe, is in order,” Ian went on jovially, slipping a drink into Orlando’s hand as if he himself had planned the party and not Peter Jackson.

“Thank you.” Breathless, again. Orlando wished he could get the star-struck feeling out of the pit of his chest.

He liked the way Ian acted as though they had always known each other. It took away some of the feelings of inferiority. He liked the way that the wealth of Ian’s long years of experience, instead of smacking people loudly before his personality could show, cropped up gradually and gently. It was all a matter of course and interwoven with who he was. 

And most importantly, there was no feeling of being appraised or searched for identifying characteristics. Things like “Oh, so he’s from Canterbury, therefore he must like x, y, and z” or “Well, he’s slender and dark-haired and…” were obviously not going through Ian’s head.

They talked for a long time that night, sharing the stories that had become standard to share; how did you get the part, when did you get the part, how has shooting been, what kind of family have you left behind, what do you think you’ll do after it’s over.

Ian found himself highly enjoying Orlando’s youthful, jittery enthusiasm. He actively ignored the nervous feeling in the boy and instead encouraged him to relax and talk on things he could go on about without much thought. It seemed to work. He was very glad they were going to get along; they had many months of shooting ahead and a lacking off-screen relationship wasn’t helpful when making a movie.

And threaded through this lovely normalcy was a kind of mutual recognition of each other. This was silent, of course, but quite tangible in each lightly focused gesture and direct gaze they shared.

By the time Orlando said goodnight to Ian, it was an entirely different kind of fixation that began to take hold. As for Ian, the night left him wondering if perhaps the boy’s attention had more too it than just admiration.

 

When conversation between two individuals begins to mean something more than it should, it’s logical to assume that there is a dynamic working between them that sets them apart from others. Not all others, surely, because this dynamic can happen between one person and several individuals at once. But exclusive or not, this sort of bond is distracting and obvious.

And, in Sir Ian’s case, just as easily pushed aside. Years of experience could not be ignored. He predicted that the situation was ripe for it; the boy was devilishly handsome in a modern sort of way and brimming over with fresh adoration for a man like Ian. He was ridiculously young at only twenty-three. Boys like that—particularly when they are actors—are too much of everything indulgent: attractive, excited, willing, and careless.

Allowing himself to become interested in a person like that wasn’t wise in Ian’s book. Add in the fact that they were both together on-location filming a picture, and, well—that made it even less wise.

Orlando was consumed with the opposite opinion. He thought about ways that he might get Ian’s attention at dinner or even afterwards. He concocted mad, elaborate schemes of seduction that he would never actually initiate. 

Ian’s warm personality, for all its openness, still maintained a shell of constant restraint. The immediate desire in someone like Orlando was to crack that shell to pieces merely to inspect the contents inside. That sort of thinking made all the sense in the world to a hotheaded twenty-three year old.

 

The one thing running through Orlando’s head as he stood on Ian’s doorstep at just past midnight on a Friday evening was that he shouldn’t be standing on Ian’s doorstep at just past midnight on a Friday evening. But three shots of vodka, dumb nerve, and cracked ideas about elves helped to whittle away at reason.

He convinced himself that he had an absolutely brilliant idea all the sudden about his character’s immortality and how it worked its way into every reaction the Elf had to the world around him. The idea seemed wonderfully abstract in his half-drunken state—something he thought Ian would like to hear him go on about. 

So Orlando poked around the crew until they offered up Ian’s address and then finally got sober enough to call up a driver. And there he stood. He thought about his ridiculous seduction plot and then momentarily forgot that that was not the reason he had come here. 

Ian, still awake and pouring over that day’s rewrites, knew who it was as soon as he heard the taxi idling at the curb. Who else would visit at such an insane hour? Viggo Mortensen was known for taking a car halfway around New Zealand just to see some landmark or talk to someone on pure urge—but even he didn’t make a habit of crashing a coworker’s flat at such an hour.

A little concerned that, if he allowed this behavior to go by unchecked, Orlando might think he approved of such a meeting or even wanted it to happen again…

Well. Yes. Alright, then. He had to admit that it was just a little exciting having one’s door charged by a strapping young man like Orlando at all hours of the night. Kind of made him feel young again. Ah, but that’s the weak spot, he thought to himself as he cinched the tie of his robe tightly and walked to answer the door.

A bit preachy and heavy-handed with ourselves, aren’t we, was his next thought to himself. The smell of alcohol registered even before Orlando’s clothing or face did. As he was so often described, he looked like a lanky, ruffled kitten; cut with boyish angles that had soft corners.

“Is everything alright?” Ian asked quietly, looking around the porch.

“Ah. Yes. I, ah… It’s fine,” Orlando stammered out. He hadn’t realized how fuzzy drinking made his brain-to-mouth coordination.

Ian raised his eyebrows, turning his mouth down thoughtfully. “Are you lost?”

Orlando laughed, a little too quickly, and then promptly closed his mouth.

“No,” he replied. “Can I come in, do you think?”

Hmm. Ian’s eyes ticked over to the taxi. The driver wouldn’t wait for long—unless he was one of the private drivers hired by the crew or unless Orlando had paid him hugely in advance.

“Of course,” Ian answered with a smile. He stepped aside, lightly putting a hand to Orlando’s lower back to usher him further inside. 

“I would offer you a drink,” he began carefully, “but judging by the hour and, ah, other indications, you’ve had several already.”

They wandered into the lounge space of the flat; Orlando sat in one of the large armchairs and Ian on the couch against the long wall. The younger man was smiling, looking around the room, and very pretty in the yellow light of the side-table lamps.

“Yeah, that’s, uhm. That’d be spot on.” He laughed. “I should apologize for that one.”

“No need,” Ian assured with a forgiving smile, laying his left hand on the armrest of the couch. “What’s on your mind?”

“Now that I’m here and the Bicardi is beginning to wear off? Not much of anything that makes sense…”

“Would you like some juice or coffee, then?”

“Yeah. I s’pose… That’d be great.”

So they relocated to the kitchen. The glaring light from the overhead lamps threatened to drive spikes deeper into Orlando’s sudden headache. So at his request Ian dimmed them almost entirely.

A glass of orange juice was set in front of him and he looked up to see Ian standing very near, robe sleeves rolled up around his elbows, his fingers twisted around a dishtowel. He had the sudden urge to wrap his hand around those forearms and feel if they were as strong as they looked.

Ian caught the look and then skirted around the table, sitting back and lacing his hands in his lap. He admitted further that, if he were to ask Orlando to stay the night, the boy would agree. And if, while staying the night, he hinted at Orlando coming to bed with him, he might agree to that, too. The vibe coming off the younger man was nothing short of tense.

And it would be nice, he thought, to make love to that slender, tight body that had not a line or hair out of perfect alignment. To feel the unending vigor of youth tensing and releasing in those newly hardened muscles. Too easy, though. Too simple. Nothing taken so easily could be respectable, surely.

He sighed to himself, watching Orlando’s throat work around swallows of juice. He wanted to. In any other place or arrangement, he might have taken the blatant offer already.

“I think you should stay,” he said, at length, when the silence grew stale. “It’s late.”

Orlando looked at him for a heartbeat and then nodded.

“Do you have a call tomorrow?”

“No. Archery in the afternoon, but the morning’s free.”

Ian smiled. “That’s settled, then. The sofa is one of those pullout affairs… But I insist you take the bed. I’ll use the sofa bed.”

Orlando was simultaneously relieved and disappointed. Relieved because he was suddenly nervous at the idea of being intimate with Ian. Disappointed because he wanted to ignore the nervous feeling and he wanted Ian to kiss him and take the decision out of his hands.

But in the end when the alcohol sloughed itself off him and revealed the layers of ache, nausea, and dizziness below, he was relieved that the night ended the way it had.

 

Tapping his pack of cigarettes against his thigh, Orlando breathed in the inky nighttime that claimed the area just outside the Wellington pub. He had closed the door behind him on the hazy, pulsing noise of the place. Inside was half the Fellowship; each member flat-out drunk or rushing to get there, and dancing with each other in ways that would give any tabloid paparazzi a thrill. 

He cupped his hand around the fragile light his Zippo offered just long enough to catch the end of the fag. He inhaled deeply and exhaled, feeling immediately better.

“Care to share a light?”

Startled, Orlando fingered the cigarette and looked over his shoulder. Ian stood there; short leather jacket zipped up halfway, hair a little windblown, and an unlit cigarette between his fingers.

A vague, self-conscious warmth came up in Orlando’s face. He offered the light and fought back impure thoughts when Ian wrapped his hands around Orlando’s to hold the lighter steady.

When they were both standing straight and within the boundaries of personal space again, Orlando looked at the older man sideways.

“Dance clubs not your thing?”

Ian laughed and gave a dry sort of eye squint back at the building. “I’ve nothing against them in particular. However the, ah, ‘dancing’ skills of our cast-mates leaves something to be desired.”

“Wouldn’t call it dancing so much as badly executed sex with clothes on.”

“You’ve found the words there, I think,” Ian replied, chuckling.

There was a pregnant silence.

“About the other night. I must’ve seemed like a total lout. Anyone else would’ve thrown me collar over fist back into that taxi.”

Ian shrugged, his mouth working around a smile. Orlando thought about kissing him again.

“You weren’t that drunk, dear boy,” he said in a gently dismissive sort of way.

“Yeah. It stands, though, you know?”

“Mm. Of course.”

Another long silence. Orlando took a long drag and exhaled, then tossed the rest of the fag to the concrete and ground it lightly with the tip of his shoe.

“I was thinking I might come over again. Without the preemptive drinking.”

“Oh?” 

“Yeah. If you’re up for it. I know it’s a busy time and all that, especially with the Edoras scenes being done out on South Island.”

“I think I can stand a bit of work and play, Orlando. Even at my age.”

Putting out his cigarette, Ian smiled. “I’ll call a car around.”

 

Getting drunk with Ian was rather different than getting drunk in preparation to see Ian. Everything on the whole was more pleasant; the faint music coming from the stereo across the living room, the yellow lamplight, and the clink of thick-bottomed scotch glasses all formed a comfortable background.

Orlando, in between messing around with the tiny stereo remote and the arrangement of liquor bottles on the coffee table, kept moving closer and closer to Ian on the couch. He hoped he was being subtle enough so that he didn’t come off like some grabby teenager.

Ian didn’t know what to think, really, as he allowed the alcohol to acid-wash the finer points of his brain. He was having a good time, as he saw it, and what was the harm in that, then?

“No, no,” Orlando laughed. “He said something about light bulbs, and I said, well, alright then, mister poncy Human type character, we’ll put them in and see what it does. So I get the putty, right, this purple—no, it was absolutely brilliant, see—and I put them in. Totally joking, yeah? And Dom comes along and turns the bloody thing on and the whole place fills up with the stench, man, it was totally disgusting. Sean was pissed eight ways to Sunday, I’m telling you.”

“And then Viggo took a picture of it,” Ian said flatly.

“He did! It’s up on the makeup mirror, you know. Where he keeps all his photographs. Wild, though, really.”

Ian chuckled, shaking his head. “Suddenly I’m glad I live here.”

Orlando snickered and then lightly nudged Ian’s shoulder with a fingertip. “Oh, you love us. You know you do.”

“Insofar as one can adore a group of lunatics, yes,” Ian sighed, looking quite comical.

“Have you been watching Sean and Elijah, though? Everyone’s all talking about it.”

Ian had heard the rumors. He never much paid attention to them, though. That sort of thing always happened on a movie set.

“Yes, yes, of course. How could I not? Poor boys. They really ought to be left alone to sort it out themselves.”

“They’re not the only ones. Billy up and shagged this fellow down at the pub the other night and it got around really fast.”

Ian raised an eyebrow, shifting a little where he sat. “Really. Well. How about yourself, then, Orlando? Been indulging at the girlfriend’s expense yet?”

Oh, that was subtle. Brilliant, old man. Ian put down his drink and added this to his list of Reasons Not To Drink with Potential Lovers. Orlando smiled, looking secretive, and stared down into the amber liquid that filled his glass.

“Don’t have a girlfriend. No one committed, anyway.” Oh, say it, already, would you, he thought to himself. He cleared his throat. “’Sides, with all these boys about, don’t think it’d be a girl getting the attention anyway.”

Say something, please, Orlando thought.

“Ooh,” Ian breathed, nodding.

“I’m not just saying that to score points with you or anything,” he blurted out.

“The thought never crossed my mind,” Ian replied, smiling and patting Orlando’s forearm lightly.

Without giving himself time to think about it, Orlando laid his left hand lightly on top of Ian’s and held the contact still.

Inhaling, Ian tried to reinforce his resolve. In the end all he could do was look away.

“When you came here, that first night. I asked you what was on your mind. What I really wanted to ask was why you’d come.”

Orlando shifted closer until their legs were touching. “I know.”

“Do you think you can answer that?”

He paused, gathering his thoughts, which were just beginning to slow around the bourbon. “I had a whole lot of rubbish about idolizing you, wanting to learn from you, that kind of thing, all neatly planned in my head.”

“And now?”

Putting his glass on the coffee table, Orlando sat back into the couch and then looked at Ian, his chest swelling with a steadying breath. Their hands were still sandwiched together and he used that to move closer.

It was awkward, just a little bit, as he leaned in to kiss Ian and waited for some kind of reciprocal movement on the older man’s part. He hovered there, his eyes meeting those gray-blue ones. He didn’t mind the wrinkles or the lines; he loved them, in fact. They were testament to all that Ian was.

“I’d like to stay, if that’s alright,” he said softly. And then he closed the small distance, covering Ian’s generous mouth with his. They stayed that way, stock-still and joined at the mouth, and then finally Ian’s fingers crept around Orlando’s wrist and squeezed.

Ian felt a controlled flush of excitement round about the middle of his body. He liked the shape of Orlando’s mouth; liked to be this close; liked the hesitancy. And he knew, for certain and all at once, that the only way to make the feeling fade was to indulge it. 

As they pulled apart, the older man smiled, pursed his lips in thought, and took a deep breath.

“Well then I suppose there’s no harm in us going into that bedroom over there,” he said.

“None at’all,” Orlando breathed, closing his eyes and leaning in again. 

 

Sometime around two o’clock in the morning, Orlando woke up and started to get dressed. He figured Ian wouldn’t want to deal with the awkward morning after scenario. And since they would see each other on set later, Orlando didn’t feel like he was leaving just to be evasive. He thought he was doing the mature thing.

So he was quite surprised when Ian found him near the kitchen. He was looking for his wallet, a little annoyed at having forgotten where he put it when they came in last night. He didn’t notice Ian right away.

“Leaving so soon?”

Stopping in the blue-white moonlight that streaked the kitchen floor, he straightened.

“I…I figured it’d be best to not wake up all funny. Dunno how you’d react.”

Ian gave him an appraising look and then closed the distance between them, gently removing the denim jacket from Orlando’s shoulders.

“If we’re going to do this,” he said, and went on to slowly undoing the buttons of Orlando’s shirt, “we should do it properly, don’t you think?”

Orlando’s nostrils flared with sudden breath and he watched, tingling from head to foot, as the shirt fluttered useless to the floor. 

“Come back to bed, Orlando,” Ian bade steadily.

With one last look at the clock and the door, Orlando let himself be drawn against Ian’s body.

 

“This isn’t going to happen again, is it?”

They were standing in the center of a glaring New Zealand morning, waiting to get picked up and driven to South Island.

“I don’t think so,” Ian said, smiling.

“I figured,” replied Orlando, nodding.

Their fixation with each other had been sort of like a pent-up breath; now that it was exhaled, there was no particular reason to try and cage it up again. Ian felt quite happy about the moments with Orlando that he had had. Orlando was satisfied in a similar way and also pleased that he had gotten the glimpse of Ian’s private self that he had wanted from the beginning.

There was nothing more to be had between the two of them romantically; but a friendship after a single, mutual romantic encounter could prove to be longer lasting and more enjoyable than any romance would have been.

And so, light-hearted and guilt-free, Orlando’s friendship with Ian McKellen finally began.


End file.
